Three Questions
by jinxedklutz
Summary: Jack decides to blackmail a desperate Daniel in exchange for his coffee. Complete. [friendship fic]


**Disclaimer:** SG-1 not mine, of course.

- - -

**"Three Questions"**

Daniel lifted his finger and pushed the button.

Now... How many times had Jack warned him not to do that? And still, he persisted. The device before him bleeped then spluttered then fizzed. Darn... This just wasn't going to work.

His coffee pot was broken.

Cursing softly, Daniel straightened from his half-hunched position and jerked the coffee pot's plug out of the wall. He then chucked the whole mess in his trash can, disgusting burned black liquid and all.

"Darn it, Jack," he said into his cell a moment later. "Answer your phone."

"'ello!" the slightly breathless voice of his long aquaintance, sometimes comrad, and slightly tenuous friend finally came over the other end. Daniel jumped and held the phone away from his ear.

"Jack! My coffee pot broke. Can I come over?"

"Don't you have any money?" Jack questioned, huffing and puffing after each word.

Daniel paced up and down the length of his kitchen and wondered suspiciously, "What are you doing?"

"Sit ups," Jack answered just as breathlessly as before, and Daniel thought. 'Should've guessed...'

"Do you know how desperate and pathetic I would look if I went to buy a coffee pot at _5:30_ in the morning?"

"As pathetic as you really are?" Jack wondered, sounding a little less breathless and a little more ironic.

Daniel had said it himself, still he didn't like the sound of it being repeated to him in Jack's voice. "Yeah--so let me just come over and make a freakin' cup of coffee, won't you?"

"O-kay..." Jack said slowly. "But you have to answer three questions."

"What are you playing at--genie or sphynx?" Daniel retorted, irritably. Not drinking his coffee tended to do that to him... that and Jack.

"Seriously, but I'll wait until you get here," Jack said and promtly hung up.

"Crap..." Daniel said, staring at his phone in shock. Darn that black-ops trained, double-crossing, mother-henning, giant kid of a USAF general...

- - -

"Daniel," Jack greeted with a far too huge smile when Daniel showed up on his doorstep minutes later, bed-headed, bedragled and very, very unhappy to be awake without his coffee.

"Shut up, and tell me where your pot is," Daniel retorted. Jack gave him an amused look, but he pushed past him and marched into the kitchen.

"Ah, ah, ah," Jack said, grabbing him from behind by the collar and maneuvering the unwilling archeologist into a kitchen chair. "No coffee until you answer the questions."

"_Jack_..." He had no time to play games. The very future of the universe could very well depend on if he got his fifty-proof caffeine dose for the day. "Cut the bull and let me get a cup of coffee."

"First question," Jack said, pulling up his own chair, "What does Jack mean?"

"Hunh?" this had been the last thing on his mind when he'd imagined Jack playing twenty-or in this case three-questions with him.

"Or, Jonathan to be exact," Jack reiterated, ignoring Daniel's confused and disgruntled response.

Daniel thought for a moment, his mouth open letting in air, germs, and flies... "Gift... er, God has given."

"Really?" Jack wondered, looking surprised.

"Does that count as your second question?" Daniel retorted impatiently. "Why did you want to know that anyway? You could've just looked it up in a baby-name book, you know."

Jack shrugged. The workings of his mind remained a mystery. "When Anise told you what her name meant, and you told her yours meant 'God is my judge'... I thought it sort of fit."

Jack thought Daniel's name fit him? In what way? This was an unusual surprise. Daniel found that he needed to concentrate to keep his mouth shut again. "How?" he finally asked.

"Oh, I don'no," Jack waved his hand around vaguely, "The whole proof that you were right all along about the pyramids thing, I guess."

Now that was just... profound. Why had _he_ never thought of it? "Hunh," was all he managed to get out despite the amount of information running across his coffee deprived brain at that moment. He shook himself, "What's the next question?"

Despite himself, he was sort of getting into this little game Jack had concocted. "Did you really mean it when you called me an idiot?"

Oh. Now _that_ was like a punch in the gut... But now that he thought of it, he never _had _apologized to Jack for saying that... He'd never even thought about if he really felt he needed to apologize or not. "Uhm," he began with uncertain carefulness, "I was really angry and upset, Jack..."

"But did you _mean_ it?" Jack insisted on questioning. What was the insane general trying to do anyway? Ruin their tentatively spun friendship all over again? As if it hadn't been bashed, bruised, cracked, undermined, and put through the ringer countless times already...

"Not re-..." Daniel started, then stopped then began again, "Yeah, in a way, but not because I thought you weren't intelligent. I just thought that the search and destroy mentality was just so ingrained in you that you couldn't have a peace-loving thought if it bit you in the-- Well, I guess I thought that you were too programmed. Or it's what I _wanted_ to think. I didn't want to admit to myself that maybe I was wrong for once about Reese... And I was just fed up with the whole 'priority' of the SGC--to find technology without reguard to the finer points of exploration and...and..." He petered off and shrugged, both embarrassed and anxious that he'd hurt Jack's feelings with his less than delicate explanation.

"But you don't think that about me anymore?" Jack half-questioned, his expression serious now, completely focused and awaiting Daniel's response.

"No... And is that your third question?" He really wasn't a very good dragon if he didn't count the extra questions. But he was a softy at heart.

"No, and why not?" Jack replied.

"Because you were just protecting me... and everyone else," Daniel added, lest he sound far too sentimental for five-something in the morning.

"Last question," Jack said, after he'd taken a few seconds to digest Daniel's response. "Why did you decide to come back after you'd ascended again? And don't give me any bull about your duty to save the world."

Oh... Now _this_ was a tough one. Shoot... What could he say? How could he explain this? Should he lie? No... No, he'd tell the truth. Jack rarely seemed to want to listen to what he had to say. He might as well take advantage of the opportunity. "I missed you guys too much the first time."

Jack sat there, a slow smile forming across his face. Daniel smiled back a second or two, then growled, "Now give me my freaking coffee."

Jack chuckled and got to his feet, turning toward the location of the coffee pot. "God has given, huh?" Daniel thought he heard him wonder quietly.

End.

Please review. I love hearing what people think of my fics. Thank you!--jinxed


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